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David Hockney:
Sunley Window 2026

Name: David Hockney: Sunley Window 2026
Start: 2026-04-01T11:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-04-01T17:00:00+00:00
Location: David Hockney: Sunley Window 2026

Wed 1 Apr–Sun 1 Nov 2026

Plan your visit

Entry

Free entry, donations welcome

Dates

Wed 1 Apr–Sun 1 Nov 2026

Times

11am–5pm, Tue–Sun & Bank Holidays

Location

Turner Contemporary, Rendezvous, Margate

Celebrating the gallery’s 15th anniversary, David Hockney’s Sunley Window focuses on the nature of light and the many ways its effects can be represented pictorially.

Admission to Turner is free. A one-off or regular donation will help support artists to realise exciting new exhibitions and inspire over 300,000 children, young people and adults each year with free access to art and creative activities.

The sunrise presented in the gallery's Sunley Window originates from a work Hockney made in Normandy. 27th April 2020, No.1 is one of over 200 iPad paintings the artist produced in this location in 2020, when the rhythms of the landscape became a sustained focus of his practice.

Reimagined at architectural scale and illuminated after dark, the image transforms the gallery’s window into a luminous field, inviting renewed attention to light, colour, and the changing seasons.

‘Hockney’s sunrise is brought into conversation with Margate’s skies and sea—encouraging a renewed attentiveness to the world around us.’

Clarrie Wallis, Director

The window will be illuminated every evening until 11pm, allowing visitors to view it from outside.

David Hockney: Sunley Window 2026 is the second in an annual recurring programme inviting artists to reimagine the gallery’s window as a public-facing artwork engaging with light, architecture and the surrounding environment.

The installation coincides with a major exhibition by David Hockney titled A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, presented at Serpentine North, London, 12 March–23 August 2026.

Visit Serpentine exhibition

About the Artist

David Hockney OM CH RA (b. 1937) has been at the forefront of the international art world for more than six decades. He emerged as one of the exceptional talents in the new generation of British artists in the early 1960s. Throughout his extraordinarily prolific career, he remains endlessly inventive and committed to celebrating the world around him. In the darkest days of the Covid lockdown, he delighted the world with his iPad paintings of Spring and renewal, an antidote to the uncertainty brought about by the pandemic.

Hockney is fascinated by the language of representation in a variety of forms. He explores the conventions of Chinese and Japanese painting as well as the traditions of European art. He has experimented with abstraction; however, he steadfastly remains a figurative artist. Constantly questioning the world around him, he draws and paints from life, from memory, and from imagination.

Throughout his career, Hockney has created many bodies of works as well as individual paintings which are now viewed as iconic. His experimental paintings in the early sixties signaled the emergence of a new artistic style. In 1964, Hockney moved to Los Angeles where he created his celebrated swimming pool series, documenting the city’s seductive charm and ambience from the position of an outsider.

Hockney’s opera designs are a significant but lesser-known part of his oeuvre. Concentrating intensely on each commission, often for more than a year at a time, many of these designs, such as Stravinsky's The Rake’s Progress (1975) and Puccini’s Turandot (1990), continue to be performed decades after their debut.

Hockney’s intellectual curiosity has led him to explore how we perceive the world. His interest in optical devices used by Western artists from the fifteenth century onwards led to the publication of Secret Knowledge in 2001 and the production of a BBC documentary in the same year.

The artist’s use of new technologies extends his interest in creating images using different means. From his photographic collages and fax machine drawings to his iPad paintings, he seeks to explore all the possibilities offered by technology in the creation of art. His life-long fascination with the possibilities of new media was recently given expression in Hockney’s ground-breaking multimedia presentation that debuted in 2023 at London’s Lightroom, which takes audiences on a personal journey through sixty years of Hockney’s life and charts the path of his artistic achievement throughout his career.

In the Spring of 2025, Hockney’s exploration of depiction in his work spanning the last seven decades was celebrated in Fondation Louis Vuitton’s David Hockney 25 in Paris, a survey exhibition exceptional in its scale and originality. Over 400 works were exhibited and provided a deeper perspective on the way in which Hockney has pushed the boundaries of each medium while searching for immediacy and a closer connection with his subjects and himself.

Following his monumental survey exhibition in Paris, Hockney returns to painting in his London studio. In November 2025, Hockney’s solo show Some Very, Very, Very New Paintings Not Yet Shown in Paris opens at Annely Juda Fine Art in London, marking the artist’s fourteenth exhibition at the gallery and presenting the most recent series of paintings and the most developed stage yet in Hockney’s dedication to ‘reverse perspective’ in painting. Completed over the last six months of the year, these works underpin Hockney’s unwavering commitment to and vigour for the act of painting.

From painting, drawing, printmaking, set design, and photography to media ranging from fax machines to iPads, Hockney demonstrates his deep understanding of art history coupled with his interest in modern technology to create new ways of seeing and presenting. David Hockney's rich and enduring body of work reveals his passion for life and curiosity about the world, epitomized by his signature phrase, 'Love Life'.

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David Hockney, London, 2023 © David Hockney. Photo: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima

Accessibility Information

We offer free monthly BSL tours of all our exhibitions, which you can book here.

We also subtitle all our films where possible and offer written transcripts of both films and audio works on display.

A hearing loop system is in place at our retail and café counters.

We’re wheelchair accessible, with step-free access and a lift serving both floors. You can enter the gallery via the access ramp to the right of the entrance steps.

You can also borrow a wheelchair or portable stool during your visit, and our staff will be happy to help if you require any additional assistance.

Large print versions of the exhibition text and magnifying sheets are available. Please ask a member of staff if you would like to use them.

Our staff are trained in delivering audio descriptive tours. If you would like more information about booking an audio described tour please get in touch with us: access@turnercontemporary.org | +44(0)1843 233 000 (operated daily 10am–5pm)

Audio versions of the exhibition text can be found on our free digital guide on the Bloomberg Connects app. For more information and to download the app click here.

Entry to the exhibition is free, but we welcome donations.

This exhibition opens on 22 November 2025.

Our opening times are:
11am–5pm, Tuesday to Sunday
And every Bank Holiday.

Turner Contemporary, Rendezvous, Margate, CT9 1HG

Supported by

And the David Hockney Sunley Window Project Supporters' Circle:

Bernard Sunley Foundation

Robert Bricout and Liesl Fichardt

Christian and Geraldine Brodie

Hugo and Kate Fenwick

H.R. Pratt Boorman Family Foundation

The J F Charitable Fund

Frank and Stephanie Martin

The Ross Foundation

Clive and Brigitte Stevens

Header image: 'David Hockney: Sunley Window 2026'. Installation view, courtesy Turner  Contemporary.  Photo: Above Ground Studio (Seraphina Neville). © Turner Contemporary

Open Today 11am–5pm